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311 



THE 



MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 



BY 



Eev. J. J. MILLER. 









31J3, 



* 



BOSTON: 4 
WILLARD TRACT REPOSITORY. 
1873. 



E>W 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

Rev. J. J. Miller, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



THE 



MILLENNIAL CHUKCEL 



CHAPTER I. 




THE HOPE OF A BETTER FUTURE. 

IK3MID the trial and conflict of the present, 
the church of Christ has always found 
comfort in the thought of the future. 
God has guarded the courses of this consolation, 
that its ministry should not fail. When the 
church, like Job, has been given over to the 
buffetings of Satan, and to the annoyance of pro- 
fessedly friendly criticism in the name of fair 
seeming but false philosophy, until all the earthly 
prospect has darkened, there has been a Divine 
prohibition which these oppressions could not 
pass. The hope of the future has lingered even 
over the desolation of Zion ; and from out the 
darkest night which has settled over the pathway 



4 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

of God's elect, have risen the words of Job's 
triumphant testimony, " I know that my Redeemer 
liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon 
the earth." Powers of the world to come have 
been laying hold upon regenerate souls with an un- 
rest which has not conflicted with Christian con- 
tentment, with a homesickness for the sight of the 
unseen which has not interfered with readiness 
for service" or with acquiescence in the Divine 
will. The idea of a coming age, brighter and 
better than any which have preceded it, wherein 
the church shall have risen out of its lowly con- 
dition, and wherein the world itself will partake 
of the new gifts, and receive another and deeper 
benediction, has found ready admission to the 
hearts of the people of God. It were not strange 
if a close examination of these hearts should 
reveal, not only a readiness to receive, but some 
degree of power to create, this idea. Such a dis- 
covery would not disprove its Biblical origin. It 
would show that God's work in the regeneration 
of souls carries with it a prophecy of the new cre- 
ation, or, in other words, that the gift of the new 
life to individuals is accompanied by the power of 
a new insight or foresight of the Divine plans. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 5 

SCRIPTURAL ORIGIN OF THE IDEA. 

If at any time it has seemed that this idea, or 
the more common and abiding images in which 
the idea has been set forth, were only the creation 
of imaginations excited by new and strange in- 
ward experiences, or that they were the reaction- 
ary product of the cross-bearing life which has 
thus far fallen to the lot of the church, there has 
been needed only the slightest reference to the 
book of the Christian revelation to show that- 
both the idea and its images are eminently Script- 
ural. Prophets of the former dispensation felt 
the quickening impulse of this truth as it disclosed 
itself in their visions. The instruments with 
which they were sent forth among their people to 
lay bare national evils and individual sins were 
sometimes laid aside, and burdens of rebuke and 
denunciation were exchanged for milder words of 
encouragement, and revelations of better things. 
Their messages presented a series of remarkable 
contrasts and rapid transitions. From the gloom 
of impending wrath, they were wont to pass, not 
as by the slow approach of morning through the 



6 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

gray of the dawn, but from the middle watch of 
starless night, to the midday splendor of an un- 
earthly day. These .transitions themselves, as 
well as the scenes in which they appear, were su- 
perhuman. The royal mark was upon them. 
Those who were the channels of these communi- 
cations gave themselves up to the influence which 
they knew was Divine. Many who heard the 
words were convinced, many were awe-stricken; 
devout souls caught the inspiration, and made 
their pilgrimage with a firmer step in the antici- 
pation of that which, though it might be distant, 
was yet near to their hearts. 

ITS PLACE IN THE FAITH OF THE EARLY CHURCH. 

The church of the early days, called upon to en- 
ter peculiarly into the sufferings of Christ, and to 
embrace his cross which seems ever to retain its 
power of wounding, as well as its mightier power 
of healing, turned with delight to those prophe- 
cies which foretold the coming of that day when 
the offense of the cross should cease. The 
Christian slave saw new meaning in the year of 
Jubilee ; the diseased saw a land wherein " the in- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 7 

habitant shall not say I am sick " Martyrs for- 
got the pains which their tormentors inflicted, and 
displayed, not only the heroism of faith, but a mas- 
tery of the Spirit over the flesh which was the 
result, not so much of an assurance of personal 
reward, as of their approach to something far 
exceeding any personal enjoyment, the glory of 
which they saw in vision. 

A LOSS IN LATER TIMES. 

The church in later days has not been without 
this consolation ; yet as differences in respect to 
doctrines have sprung up, and divisions have 
taken place, with the losses which have followed 
the neglect or rejection of portions of the truth, the 
question very properly arises, whether there has 
not been a loss in respect to this truth ; whether, 
while Christians of all the sects into which the 
church has been divided have been animated by 
the views they have held concerning that which 
is beyond, there has not been a loss in unity and 
definiteness; whether it is true that a certain 
loftiness of spirit, which characterized the early 
Christians in their expectation of a speedy con- 



8 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

summation of the plans of God in a wonderful 
and soul-entrancing glory, is not lacking in those 
of later times, who are looking more for a per- 
sonal deliverance from the evils of this life, by a 
peaceful death, and for admission at length into 
a quiet place of rest in a far-off heaven ; in other 
words, whether the hope of the individual has not 
taken the place of the hope of the church. 

A CHANGE IN PHRASEOLOGY. 

It will hardly be disputed that the language in 
which these subjects are now spoken of by many 
differs from that which was in common use in the 
apostolic times, or that this change in phraseology 
has been the result of a similar change in the in- 
terpretation of the prophetic Scriptures. It will 
not be necessary to give a formal statement of the 
views upon these subjects which are more com- 
monly held by American Christians, nor will it be 
needful at this point to give any explanation of 
the title of this book. It is assumed that the 
association of the two words millennial and church 
at once largely relieves the latter from the burden 
of those questions which divide the great body of 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 9 

Christians at the present time ; that all discussions 
about the foundation, order, and ordinances of the 
church will have been settled when the millen- 
nium shall have fully come. 

THE DOCTRINE STATED. 

1. The millennial church will be the glorified 
church. 

It is intended to show under this statement that 
the millennium does not belong to this dispensa- 
tion, or form the concluding portion of this age ;' 
that the church will not enter the millennial state 
simply and alone through the continuance of the 
present operations of grace ; that it will not enter 
that state in the flesh, nor yet directly through 
death, but through the resurection of the dead in 
Christ and the translation and transformation of 
the living saints at the second coming of Christ. 
Three passages are here noticed as furnishing a 
part of the Scriptural basis for this statement. 

1 Thess. iv. 16, 17, —"For the Lord Himself 
shall descend from heaven with a shout, and with 
the voice of the archangel and with the trump of 
God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then 



10 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up 
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord 
in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 
1 Cor. xv. 52, — "In a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed." It will be conceded 
that the result of the later criticism upon the text 
of these two passages sustains the rendering of the 
English version as substantially correct. The first 
clause of the passage from Thessalonians teaches 
most clearly the doctrine that the Lord Jesus will 
again return to this earth, a literal personal ap- 
pearing ; in emphatic distinction from other things, 
which are by some put in the place of such a re- 
turn. If there is any truth in the expression that 
the Lord comes when a man dies, that is not the 
coming which is here declared. 

THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST LITERAL. 

That coming of the Lord which takes place 
when a soul is converted is not here spoken of, 
nor will any fulfillment of the promise made by 
Christ of his spiritual presence with his people, 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 11 

answer the requirements of this passage. If there 
is any language with which the literal second 
coming of Christ can be expressed so as to afford 
no reasonable ground for denial or misunderstand- 
ing or wrong appropriation, such language is 
used by the Apostle in these words, " For the 
Lord Himself shall descend from heaven," taken 
in their connection. If these words are to be 
understood as referring to some future display of 
grace more marked than has been before, some 
more wonderful spiritual revelation of God to* 
his people, then it ought also to be believed that 
the dead in Christ are not those saints who have 
passed the literal death, but rather persons who 
are spiritually dead ; and the term, " we which 
are alive," must mean those who are spiritually 
living, in which case the spiritually dead and the 
spiritually alive are to be caught up together into 
some high spiritual or airy state, and in which 
movement those who are alive will have no pre- 
cedence over those who are spiritually dead. 

But this is not the worst of such an interpreta- 
tion ; consistency requires that the death and res- 
urrection of Christ mentioned in the verse next 



12 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

but one preceding this should also be understood 
as a spiritual death and resurrection. It is sub- 
mitted that such a use of Scripture is a perversion 
of that which has been given to men for their 
instruction unto another use which can indoctri- 
nate men in nothing because it can present no sta- 
ble grounds for the establishment of faith. It 
would not have been thought necessary to enter 
thus upon a defense of a literal interpretation of 
this passage which is doubtless admitted by most 
Christians, were it not for the fact that there are 
those who stand as teachers and interpreters of 
the Scriptures who do not hesitate to speak of 
some future manifestation of the Holy Spirit 
more powerful and extensive than any which has 
yet been known, as constituting the hope of the 
church, and as the fulfillment of those prophecies 
which foretell the Lord's return. 

THE COMING OF DEPARTED SAINTS WITH CHRIST. 

The scene revealed in these passages opens at 
the time when this age is closing. A remaining 
body of believers, a rear-guard of the church, is 
still on the earth. The bodies of the righteous 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 13 

dead yet sleep where they fell. The dwellers on 
the earth are engaged in the various pursuits of 
earthly life. Suddenly the heavenly places are 
astir with a new movement. The hour is come 
for which the spirits of the righteous dead have 
waited. Summoned by a call which pervades all 
ranks of the heavenly company, they with attend- 
ant hosts of angels have gathered about the person 
of Christ and with Him have descended into the 
region of earth. They are come close to the scene 
of their old strife, but not into contact with it. 
They do not seek amid the dead for those bodies 
which saw corruption. The mystery of their 
long patience is about to end. They are clothed 
upon with their new bodies incorruptible, glori- 
ous, having whatever relation to those which went 
to dust the Divine power is pleased to give them, 
yet being such that they are at once new and res- 
urection bodies. 

THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 

Simultaneously with this scene, or following 
an order which is more of rank than of time, the 
faithful, who have borne up against the rising tide 



14 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

of earthly sorrow and of earthly sin, are caught 
up from their pilgrimage. The scenes of Tabor 
and of Olivet are repeated, only it is now the 
mystic body of Christ which is transfigured ; only 
it is now the church which makes the ascension, 
charioted upon clouds, and borne away to the ap- 
pointed meeting-place with the returning King. 
The other of these three passages is Rev. xx. 4, 
7, — " And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, 
and judgment was given unto them ; and I saw 
the souls of them that were beheaded for the 
witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and 
which had not worshipped the beast, neither his 
image, neither had received his mark upon their 
foreheads or in their hands, and they lived and 
reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the 
rest of the dead lived not a^ain until the thousand 
years were finished. This is the first resurec- 
tion." 

THE DESCRIPTION DRAMATIC. 

The place where this scene transpires is not 
definitely stated. 

In the first verse of this chapter, an angel is 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 15 

seen who has descended out of heaven, whose 
mission is the binding and imprisonment of Satan ; 
verses seven to ten present the loosing of Satan, 
and his last great act of deception among the na- 
tions of the earth : but this passage opens with 
the abrupt announcement, "I saw thrones and 
they sat upon them." The subject of the verb 
translated sat is not expressed, nor do the verses 
immediately preceding furnish the subject ; while 
it is evident that the opening verses of the chap- 
ter are closely related to this passage, yet the 
scene here described stands by itself, distinct both 
from what precedes and from what follows. If 
the passage were transposed, and its opening 
clauses were inserted toward the end of the fourth 
verse, the subject would be at once apparent. 
Such a transposition, mentally made, is doubtless 
intended. The whole scene is dramatic — the 
Revelator speaks as he sees. A vision of thrones 
comes before him. They are not unoccupied. 
He sees both the thrones and those who are 
seated upon them, at the same moment. 



16 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

WHO HAVE PART IN THE FIRST RESURRECTION. 

It is not yet made known to him what the 
vision is or who they are whom he sees ; as he 
looks, the vision changes, new elements are added 
by which the needed explanation is given, and 
the before nameless occupants of the thrones are 
introduced to his knowledge. These are the 
souls of those beheaded for the testimony of Jesus 
and for the word of God, and whoever did not 
worship the beast, neither his image, and did not 
receive the mark upon the forehead or upon their 
hand. The persons here mentioned, are often 
spoken of as though constituting but a single 
class, namely, the martyr dead. But if such 
were the case, why these clauses following the 
first ? Are they merely descriptive of the virtues 
of the martyrs ? Such a description would 
hardly be needed. It would not be needful to 
say of those who had died for the testimony of 
Jesus, that they had not worshipped the beast ; the 
manner of their death was an all-sufficient witness 
to that fact. 

It is evident that more than one class of per- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 17 

sons is here mentioned. A comparison of the 
terms, beast and his image, here used, with like 
terms in the thirteenth chapter, is sufficient to 
identify them as describing the same great powers 
of evil. It is there said that power was given 
unto the beast to make war with the saints and 
also over every tribe and tongue and nation, and 
the startling fact is added, that all the dwellers on 
the earth would worship the beast, except those 
who names were written in the Lamb's book of 
life. Here the classes mentioned under these 
titles widen out to embrace the whole of the un- 
godly or anti-christian portion of- the world, henco 
it follows that the classes enumerated in this pas- 
sage as the martyrs for Jesus, and as not having 
worshipped the beast nor his image, nor having his 
mark, embrace all those who bad died in the Lord. 
This passage, thus interpreted, presents the mar- 
tyred dead first mentioned in honorable distinc- 
tion, then the rest of the godly who had withstood 
the trials of earth and who had died in the faith. 
These, says the inspired observer, lived. Not the 
mere fact of existence, not the deeper fact of 
spiritual life, is here meant, but the resurrection 



18 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

or completed life. He stands beholding the scene 
which Paul describes in the previous passage, at 
that point where the descending saints reach the 
vicinity of earth. His eye sweeps along the lines 
of that vast assembly of the blessed, just at the 
moment when they are clothed upon with their 
immortal bodies, at the moment when they know 
for the first time the rapture and glow of complete 
and glorified human life and are entering upon 
their millennial reign. Beneath the range of this 
rapt vision, lies the guilty world with its wide 
field of death, whereon he sees the graves of the 
wicked dead undisturbed, their bodies left to their 
unhallowed sleep till the thousand years are end- 
ed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and 
holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection ! 
On such the second death hath no power, but they 
shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall 
reign with Him a thousand years. These follow- 
ing words add force to the interpretation given ; 
for, by natural inference, those not then raised are 
those who await the power of the second death, 
and the attributing to these saints of the priestly 
and kingly offices only places them in the posi- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 19 

tion which is the common heritage of the faithful 
church, for in the ascription of praise with which 
the book of Revelation opens, the Apostle, in the 
name of the churches, or rather of the whole 
church says, "Unto Him who has washed us 
from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests unto God, to Him be glory and 
dominion forever and ever ! " These passages 
show that the return of the Lord will take place 
at the beginning of the millennial season. That 
the millennium will be under another dispensation, 
at the beginning of which the church will be 
withdrawn from its earthly conflict and intro- 
duced into its glorified state. 

Christ's prayer for glory. 

In the prayer of Christ on the last night of 
his earthly ministry, He asks the Father for the 
gift of glory. There may be a graduated use of 
the term ; He may have asked for a measure of 
the gift such as would consist with the Divine 
plan, such as would comport with his condition, 
and might rest upon Him in the last great act of 
his life and in the moment of his death. There 



20 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

is such a use of the word when He says, " I 
am glorified in them," namely, the disciples, and 
" I have glorified thee " — the Father — on the 
earth. But this prayer has a wider range. It 
reaches through and beyond any glory which 
might be granted Him in those last hours of his 
life, and reveals its full import in the added words, 
" with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." 

THE REASON FOR THE PRAYER. 

The meaning of this prayer is not grasped by 
those who see in it only the cry of the sad and 
weary Son of man, worn by the labor of the past 
years, and oppressed by the sense of the greater 
burden which was being laid upon Him ; who dis- 
cern only the cry for deliverance and rest. It was 
rather the outburst of his royal nature, which 
was appropriate to that hour when He could say, 
" I have finished the work thou gavest me to 
do." Now when the years of the hidings of 
his power and of the repression of his nature 
were ending, these words, so tremulous with the 
spirit of that world which was bending over Him, 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 21 

break from his lips as a testimony to that which 
was in Him and to that which belonged to Him. 
Glory is an essential of Christ's state ; the emp- 
tying was extraordinary, the desire to return to 
that which had been was natural. In a sense it 
may be said the prayer of Christ was not neces- 
sary, because glory would have gathered itself to 
Christ as the halo gathers about the sun, as soon 
as the scene of earth had closed. 

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE RIGHTEOUS DEAD. 

That which is thus an attribute of Christ be- 
longs in degree to his people-, because they are 
made for it. The prayer of Christ was a type of 
the prayer of the church. An unutterable yearn- 
ing for glory belongs, not as a weakness or a sin 
or a defect to be removed, but as a right and nat- 
ural quality to the renewed soul. The saint life 
is not complete until it is glorified. Departed 
saints are spoken of as gone to glory, yet this 
can be true of the present actual state of these 
saints only in a restricted sense, that they are 
gone from earth to a blessed abiding with Christ. 
That they are conscious and happy is shown in 



22 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

words which give utterance to the desire of an 
apostle to be absent from the body in order that 
he might be present with the Lord, a state which 
upon personal grounds he regarded as far better 
than his then present state. In the faith which 
supports dying saints there is victory ; they enter 
into rest and their sleep is sweet ; but these ascend- 
ing spirits cannot enter immediately upon that glo- 
ry which is the hope of the church. The time for 
that state to begin, as clearly fixed by Scripture, 
the manner of its introduction, and the condition 
of the saints, all forbid such a thought. Death is 
not the door — Jesus and the Resurrection are the 
words which hold in their embrace the hope of 
the church and are the words which are written 
over the gates of glory — until the resurrection the 
saints who have died are not complete, an essen- 
tial of their humanity is wanting. God surely 
does not glorify men while as yet they are lack- 
ing a part of that which constitutes their com- 
plete nature. The glorifying of the saints fol- 
lows the completion of all inwardly renewing or 
sanctifying work, and includes the exaltation of 
the purified to the outward positions and gifts for 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 23 

which their inward gifts and life shall have fitted 
them. The mutual adaptation of all related 
things to each other is so manifestly a rule of the 
Divine action as to furnish a ground of belief, 
amounting almost or quite to a certainty, that the 
glory which will be given to souls will be the 
exact expression of their inward nature and char- 
acter. The resurrection, in its order and in the 
quality or extent of its gifts, will be a visible 
declaration of the character and consequent rank 
of every member of Christ's body. 



CHAPTER II. 

OPPOSING VIEWS. 

made T7 * ^ f tMs P ° int referen <* be 
made to the views of those who regard the mil- 

ennium as belonging to this dispensation" who 

are looking forward to the days when the church 

now dispersed and divided, weakened by anient 

nS 8 ^ * '. ^° rSake itS interKal warfare, and 
unite its strength against the common foe ; and 

when the forces of evil, unable to withstand such 

edTrne? f b r U ? dU f "5 C ° me t0 *e achnowl 
edgnient of the truth. Or else that these still 

divided hosts of God, each guided by an unsSn 

bu overruling Providence, shall address itself 

one boT P f 0r nr-° f th6 W ° rk; that the "* °f 

of ott \ I 1StianS Sha11 StimuIate the *«* 
of other bodies ; and these, all acting with such 

concert as may be secured, shall pfess on the 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 25 

work of evangelization in all directions until they 
shall circle and overspread the earth, coming to- 
gether at last, as different parties ascending a 
mountain from opposite sides meet at the top, and 
are then filled with a common joy at the great 
success ; errors melted away in the increasing 
light, differences cast aside, the long-looked-for 
unity of the faith in the bond of peace reached, 
the church of Christ shall stand forth in power 
and beauty, embracing a converted world, and 
from that proud position shall send up to heaven 
the tidings that its work is done and that it is 
now ready to receive its Lord. 

THE SUPPOSED PROOF FROM OLD TESTAMENT. 

There are. some portions of Scripture, espe- 
cially prophecies of the Old Testament, which are 
supposed to furnish grounds for this view. They 
are such as these, Isaiah ii., In the last days 
the mountain of the Lord's house is to be estab- 
lished in the top of the mountains and all nations 
are to flow unto it. Idols are to be utterly abol- 
ished, men shall beat their swords into plough- 
shares and their spears into pruning hooks, na- 



26 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

tion shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
shall they learn war any more. Psalm lxxii., 
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and 
from the river unto the ends of the earth. Isaiah 
ix., Of the increase of his government and peace 
there shall be no end. Isaiah xi., The earth 
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the 
waters cover the sea. Isaiah lii., The Lord hath 
made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the 
nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see 
the salvation of our God. 

THE MEANING OF THESE PASSAGES. 

That these and many like passages in the 
prophets are intended to set forth the triumph of 
the kingdom of God and a condition of things 
unlike that which now exists on the earth and 
far more blessed, does not admit of doubt. % Any 
view of future events which finds these visions of 
brightness inconsistent with its own outline, or 
which for the sake of preserving its own integrity 
feels the necessity of passing by these Scriptures, 
can have no integrity that is worth preserving. 
The question is not, whether these are prophecies 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 27 

which must have fulfillment, but rather as to the 
time and manner of their fulfillment ; not whether 
they connect with Christ and his kingdom, but 
what the relation is which they sustain to that 
kingdom. The most obvious teaching of these 
Scriptures is not that the Christian church will 
advance and take possession of the redeemed and 
beautified world in this dispensation. Indeed, the 
language does not favor the idea that the church 
will directly furnish the visible actors in these 
scenes ; yet were it to be understood that the 
church finds the path of its future through these 
scenes, the beauty and blessedness here described 
do not appear as the immediate and direct results 
of that form of service which the church is called 
to render. When it is attempted to trace the prog- 
ress of these operations, which began with the 
commencement of this era, through the centuries 
that have passed and on possibly along the course 
of coming centuries, far exceeding in number, as 
some suppose, those that have already passed, and 
to show a varying, yet, on the whole, steady growth 
of the fruits of the Spirit in the soil of this earth, 
and to picture the ripened harvest of this effort 



28 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

bounded and outlined by these prophecies, there 
is a want of agreement ; the words of the prophet 
refuse to fill the places thus assigned to them. 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL DISPEN- 
SATION. 

There are certain well-defined characteristics of 
the work to which the church is commissioned — 
there is, if the expression is allowable, a style in 
which the Holy Spirit carries on his present 
work, a manner in which the church unites with 
the Spirit, and a way in which the church ad- 
vances. 

It is ordained that the Gospel be preached to 
men everywhere, whether they hear or forbear. 
Every conversion is a quiet taking from the forces 
of this world and an adding to the forces of God. 
This is the way and the only way in which the 
church is authorized to work. Wherever it has de- 
parted from this method, the power and mark of 
God have departed ; wherever any body claiming 
to be the church has sought to advance its inter- 
ests by the use of other means, God has put the 
stamp of his displeasure upon the movement. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 29 

DIFFERING CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE PROPH- 
ECIES. 

But these prophecies do not shape themselves 
in accordance with these gentle movements of 
grace. They have another style — characteristics 
as marked but differing. Instead of the quiet ad- 
vance of the church, patient, suffering, until at 
length it comes to the place of gladness, coming in 
as a band of harvesters come from the field with 
peaceful songs, — there is a sound of war. In the 
time when the idols shall be cast to the moles and 
bats, the men who worshipped them are not repre- 
sented as bowing in submission at the altars of 
Christian service, but as fleeing into the holes of 
the rocks and into the caves of the earth, for fear 
of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, 
when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth. 
Men beat their swords into ploughshares, not be- 
cause in quiet congregations they have become 
convinced of the unrighteousness of war, but as a 
result of the Lord's appearance among the na- 
tions to judge and to rebuke. The time when 
the mountains shall bring peace to the people, 



30 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

and when He shall come down like rain upon the 
mown grass, and when his dominion shall be from 
sea to sea, comes when He shall break in pieces 
the oppressor and when his enemies shall lick 
the dust. He whose arm brought salvation will 
repay fury to his adversaries. He that cometh 
from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah is 
not Christ in his humiliation and wet with the 
blood of Calvary' but the King, glorious in his 
apparel, and his garments red from treading the 
wine-press of the wrath of God, and the day of 
vengeance introduces the year of his redeemed. 
A new arm of Divine service is introduced, the 
heavens appear full of the hastening wonders of 
a new movement. Earth wakes again to the 
tread of the Almighty moving in the terribleness 
of his power. New scenes — a change in means 
and in operation, rapidity of action, suddenness 
of stroke — the bursting forth of judgments ap- 
propriate to follow the long abuse of the Gospel 
and of the testimony of the faithful church, — 
these are the characteristic marks of the opera- 
tions of God in the days of these prophecies, and 
it is by these that God will open the way to the 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 31 

particular forms of beauty and blessedness which 
these visions of the prophets describe. 

THE RELATION WHICH THE COMING SEASON OF 
EARTHLY BLESSEDNESS HAS TO THE CHURCH. 

That the church has an interest in these new 
endowments of earth is manifest; but these do 
not appear as new lines of beauty, lineaments of 
grace developed in the form and overspreading 
the features of the bride of Christ, but rather as 
a bridal gift, presented to her who is already per- 
fect and glorious in every part ; they appear not 
as possessions into which the church has grown 
by a long process of spiritual absorption and ac- 
cretion in the present order of things, but rather 
as a new display of the Divine grace and power 
which have been hidden from sight, curtained be- 
hind the progressively developed plans of Godj 
from which at the appointed time the veil is lifted, 
and which the church is led forth to look upon as 
among the things prepared for her by the Lord. 






32 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 



THE TIME OF FULFILLMENT. 

These prophecies do not promise fulfillment be- 
fore, but after, the second coming of Christ. Dan- 
iel (Dan. vii.) declares that the power of the king- 
doms of this world continues until the Ancient of 
days comes ; then it is that judgment is given to 
the saints, and the saints possess the kingdom — 
and, in the vision of Zechariah, " The time when 
the Lord shall be King over all the earth is pre- 
ceded, not by the first coming of the Lord only, 
but by the great gathering of the nations to bat- 
tle, and by that appearance of the Lord wherein 
his feet stand upon the Mount of Olives, which 
is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount 
of Olives cleaves asunder toward the east and 
toward the west, half the mountain removing 
toward the north and half of it toward the south, 
leaving a very great valley." Hence these Script- 
ures, which are regarded by some as proof that 
the millenium will form the bright conclusion of 
this present age, are really evidences against such 
a view. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 33 

ARGUMENTS FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Following these, another class of passages, 
found chiefly in the New Testament, claim atten- 
tion. If the world were to be wholly or largely 
converted in these days ; if the power of the Spirit 
was to be so greatly increased in the church as to 
bring into vital union with God all those who now 
have only a nominal relation to it ; if the church, 
under the inspiration of the Spirit, flaming with 
fiery zeal, was to reach such a condition of influence 
and power, that all those communities and states 
which are Christian in name, unable to withstand 
the fervor of churclily words and deeds, should 
yield to regenerating grace ; and if the mission- 
ary organizations, now doing noble work under 
many limitations, were to have their defects 
purged away, their hinderances removed, and with 
plans perfected, and wants in men and money 
abundantly supplied, and above all, made increas- 
ingly efficient by the grace of God, were to go 
forth to their great work, in the assurance of 
bringing all the heathen nations to the obedience 
of the faith, the line of such an advance of the 
3 



34 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

church must be radiant with glory. If, for a 
season, the sight of this glory is obscured, the 
obscuration must reach its end, and the brilliancy 
of these movements flash upon the vision of the 
earnest student of God's word. But no such 
Bible vision of the earthly journey of the church of 
Christ rewards the student's search. 

THE EARTHLY LOT OF THE CHURCH ONE OF 
TRIAL TILL THE END. 

A mission noble in its nature, grand in its 
object, and blessed in its results, is the God-given 
mission of the church on earth. The world has 
nothing to compare with it. The Spirit of the 
living God walketh amid candlesticks, whose 
shining is with a light from heaven. A spirit of 
self-sacrifice and a moral heroism has been dis- 
played along the track of the church, over which 
angels have rejoiced. The people which sat in 
darkness have seen great light, and to them which 
sat in the region and shadow of death light has 
sprung up, a multitude of souls have been saved, 
whose coming to the great assembly shall be from 
the east, from the west, from the north, and from 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 35 

the south ; but both the past history of the church 
and the prophecy of its future present to view 
a course rugged in its smoothest places, lying 
through wildernesses and across desert wastes even 
to the time of the end. The experience of the 
Master is the experience of his faithful servants. 
A partnership in his temptation, a sympathy with 
his sorrow, a continuance of his conflict, a fill- 
ing-up of that which is behind of the sufferings 
of Christ, has been, and is, the lot of the church 
on earth. The commission is to preach the gos- 
pel in all the world for a witness unto all nations, 
but not with the promise that the message shall 
everywhere be welcomed. 

THE STATE OF THE WORLD THROUGHOUT THIS 

AGE. 

The tenor of the inspired testimony is that the 
path of the church lies through the midst of wars 
and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, 
amid famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, through 
persecutions of the world, offences and betrayal 
of false brethren, iniquity abounding, and the love 
of many waxing cold. " This know, that in the 



36 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

last days perilous times shall come, for men shall 
be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, 
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, un- 
thankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce- 
breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, de- 
spisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, 
high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers 
of God, having a form of godliness but denying 
the power thereof." ( Tim. iii. ) " And evil men 
and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving 
and being deceived." ( Matt, xxiv.) " But as the 
days of Noah, so shall also the coming of the Son 
of man be." ( 2 Peter iii.) " There shall come in 
the last days scoffers, walking after their own 
lusts and saying, where is the promise of his com- 
ing ? " Nor is it the testimony of the Scriptures 
that the anti-Christian kingdoms shall be over- 
turned during this age, and previous to the Lord's 
return. The book of Daniel, in whatever way 
its revelations are interpreted, seems incapable of 
any fair interpretation which does not leave the 
truth standing out with clearness that the man- 
euvering of hostile forces continues to the end. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 37 

THE PRESENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE RACE. 

The condition of the nominal church in the last 
days is far from that which the theory of increas- 
ing strength and beauty and a converted world 
would demand. Foolish and graceless professors 
will still be in the company of those who are wise 
unto eternal life. The views of certain persons 
are influenced by their contemplation of the in- 
creasing power of the human race, the wonderful 
development of mind, the enlargement of the 
scope of human investigations in science, the sub- 
jection of matter and the control of forces. In- 
ventions which have brought the once distant 
nations into the relation of neighbors, discoveries 
and systems of education which are furnishing 
the common people with stores of information 
formerly unknown even to scholars, — these, it is 
judged, are preparing the way for a knowledge of 
social relations and of the laws of national life 
and international comity that must soon extend 
itself in beneficent reign over all the nations of 
the earth. But God reminds men that the spread- 
ing of a worldy civilization is not one with the 



38 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

extension of his kingdom ; that increase of knowl- 
edge and of power in an ungodly world bears 
along with it the enlargement and intensifying of 
wickedness. 

THE MAN OF SIN. 

He teaches that inventions will continue to be 
made ; men shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
shall be increased, yet iniquity shall abound, and 
after all the boas led progress of the race and its 
emergence from the darkness of the past, in the 
time when the ripened fruit of the world's long 
season of culture ought to appear, and in the very 
time when, according to the view of some, the in- 
creasing power and glory of the church ought to 
be overspreading the earth and celebrating its 
last and crowning victory over sin and evil ; at 
that time, close down to the end of this age, there 
appears by the truer delineations of the prophetic 
word a more dreadful form than any which have 
preceded it, a gathering of the forces of evil, a 
drawing together into a strange unity of those 
elements which, though opposed to God, have 
been unable to maintain fellowship among them- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 39 

selves, a fiercer glowing of the passion fires in un- 
godly souls, a rising tide of the world's depravity, 
out of which as by a birth-pang of hell shall spring 
a giant form of wickedness, more malignant and 
heaven-defying than the mind of man has yet con- 
ceived ; a being, human in form, but diabolical in 
nature, rearing himself in the midst of the world's 
civilization and drawing about himself multitudes 
of men in a besotting service and a blasphemous 
worship, all the more strange and wicked because 
following on the long- taught lessons of a world's 
decayed idolatry. It is with the form of such a 
wickedness in the person of the man of sin, like a 
black and hideous object, projected on the back- 
ground of the picture of this age — that the scene 
draws toward its close. 

THE PROPER ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH TO- 
WARD HER ABSENT LORD. 

Another evidence of the mistake of those who 
look for scenes of millennial glory in this pres- 
ent age appears in the Scriptural attitude of the 
church toward her absent Lord. The church 
wears his name ; He is its head ; He is the 
absent bridegroom. 



40 THE MILLENNfAL CHURCH. 

The sacrificial work of Christ is not His only- 
work. All the experiences of grace which follow 
the footsteps of regenerate souls are intended to 
strengthen the bond that bound them in the hour 
of their birth. It is not distinctively the church 
of the Holy Spirit, but the church of Christ. The 
Spirit is the guide and sanctifier of the church. 
He acts for Christ. He speaks not of Himself, 
but takes of the things of Christ and reveals 
them to believers. This involves no question of 
the deity of the Spirit, but is simply the way in 
which God is pleased to reveal Himself. It is the 
order of the Divine relationship to the church. 
The presence of the Holy Spirit, therefore, in the 
church, does not change its relation to Christ to 
make Him any less its head, or to make proper 
any other position or attitude of the body than 
that of expectation and looking for until He ap- 
pears. His return to His people is the event 
which they are directed to keep before them con- 
stantly ; not the death of individual members of 
the body, but the return of the Lord to the body 
itself. It is this that is urged as a motive to per- 
sonal fidelity, as the posture which is becoming 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 41 

and safe, not to preserve which is so contrary to 
the spirit of the Christian profession as to throw- 
doubt upon the character of those who are forget- 
ful. It is this event which is to signalize to the 
church the hour of its deliverance from trial and 
conflict. It embodies the Christian hope, is a source 
of joy amid sorrow — of comfort in affliction — of 
patience in the long night watches of the waiting. 

THE RETURN OF THE LORD IMMINENT. 

The return of the Lord is set forth in the New 
Testament as imminent. Watch is the one word 
which expresses the duty of the church in this 
respect ; not cease to watch because the subject 
seems involved and men cannot tell just when the 
Lord will come, but watch for the very reason 
that men know not the hour. If it were true of 
some among the early Christians, that they came 
to hold extravagant notions respecting this truth, 
it is even more certain that the inspired writers 
who sought to correct such notions did not do this 
by casting reproach upon the doctrine itself of the 
Lord's return, nor by denying the fact of the immi- 
nence of that event. To be in readiness, to wait 



42 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

for the Lord from heaven, to be established in ho- 
liness at his coming, to comfort one another with 
the words which describe his advent, to know that 
He will come suddenly as a thief in the night to 
those who are ungodly, to be preserved blameless 
unto his coming, not to be troubled by the false 
notion that the day of the Lord was at hand — 
that is, already present ; to wait patiently for and 
love his appearing, that the apparent delay did 
not invalidate the promise, that the time was 
short, the night far spent, and though a thousand 
years were with Him as one day, yet would He 
come quickly, — were the forms of expression put 
into the mouths of the early disciples by inspira- 
tion of the Holy Spirit. 

Whoever accepts the inspiration ought to ac- 
cept the correctness of these words, and of the 
hope which was built upon them. 

A DIFFICULTY WITH THE SPIRITUALIZING 
THEORY. 

The lengthened delay now covering eighteen 
centuries takes nothing from the fact of the im- 
minence of this great event. It was God's will 






THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 43 

that the day should tarry, and that its place in the 
years should be unknown to men, and yet that it 
should be looked for as constantly impending. 

But while such delay does not properly change 
in the least the attitude of the church, the inter- 
vention of any definitely stated long season would 
necessarily effect a change. If there is Scriptural 
ground for the belief that the present operations 
of grace are to go on acting upon the world until 
this triumphant progress of the truth results in 
the world-wide blessedness of the millennium, 
which period must itself be what the term indi- 
cates, a thousand years, or else that the term is 
used for an indefinitely long period, such as shows 
the world to be yet in its infancy and this age to 
be only fairly begun, and if the second coming of 
Christ will not occur until the close of this long 
period, then the idea of the imminence of that 
event falls and with it the force of these warning 
and comforting words. From such considerations 
it is affirmed that the church of Christ cannot 
reach its millennial state until the second coming 
of Christ, and that it will pass to that glory 
through the resurrection of the righteous dead 
and the translation of the then living saints. 




/ 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH WILL BE THE WED- 
DED OR CONSORT CHURCH. 

The saints in the glorified state will appear as 
individuals, each rewarded according to the record 
of earthly life, yet individuality will blend in a 
new personality in the transaction of that hour. 
That which shall for the time withdraw the gaze 
of the universe from even the most eminent saints 
will be the oneness of the church, beautiful in its 
members, but transcendently glorified in the unity 
of the many in one body. The church of Christ 
has been constituted a distinct and peculiar com- 
pany, and the highest designation of her rank is 
that which is given when she is announced as 
the bride of Christ. 

Of the scene itself in which this relation is to 
be consummated there is no description ; not even 
the visions of the apostle of the Revelation appear 






THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 45 

to have penetrated so far as this banquet hall of 
the heavenly places ; yet in the allusions scattered 
through the New Testament there are given cer- 
tain features or qualities of the relation itself. 
These allusions are such as point to something 
more than that measure of joy which will be 
filled when the saints find themselves in the pres- 
ence of Christ and in the possession of the per- 
sonal graces of redemption. 

THE EXALTED AND PECULIAR NATURE OF 
THE RELATIONSHIP. 

The inspired selection of the terms Bridegroom 
and Bride, as applied to Christ and his church, 
does not exhaust its purpose when it has conveyed 
to the mind the idea of intimate, tender, and abid- 
ing spiritual relationship. The saints will be sin- 
less, but more than sinlessness is here required. 
Adam had that quality in his first estate, yet the 
scenes of that earthly paradise present no such 
relation as this. Spirituality must be a quality 
of the wedded church, but more than this is re- 
quired ; angels have a perfection of spiritual life, 
but the angels attendant at the marriage supper 



\ 



46 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

will not wear the garments of the Bride ; more than 
these qualities, more than immortality, more than 
salvation are demanded and must be possessed by 
the church when she is led forth to meet the 
Bridegroom. There must be the completion of 
an endowment of grace which has been going on 
for ages, and the highest result of which will be 
a likeness to Christ in and through the mystery 
of his incarnation. 

THE IDEAL MANHOOD. 

What the Divine ideal of manhood is, is known 
not by anything that the human race has yet pro- 
duced, is known only as Christ is known, and as 
Christ in his glory is yet veiled from earthly sight, 
the ideal man is yet hidden behind the same veil. 
The best conceptions are no better, no nearer the 
object than are the earthly conceptions of heavenly 
things ; and whatever may be the endowments of 
soul and body, whatever increase or addition of 
powers may be needful to consummate such a 
relation, the relation must be such as shall per- 
fectly satisfy the whole glorified nature of man. 

Figurative as the language is which speaks of 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 47 

the church as the wife of Christ, its meaning un- 
folds itself in a progress which approaches nearer 
to the literal. In this present time saints discern 
their Lord spiritually, but that longing which at 
times they feel for another presence of Him they 
love is not a longing for something which is less 
than they now have, or which is unworthily sen- 
suous in its nature, but is rather a Divinely im- 
planted desire, the gratification of which will 
mark the more spiritual and complete state of the 
glorified humanity. If the conception of a union 
with Christ which shall be something more than 
a union of spirit, seems to any to involve a low- 
ering standard ; the difficulty ought to be located 
where it belongs, in the earthliness and limitation 
of all present conception of that complete human- 
ity in which there shall be no degradation of its 
spiritual elements by their contact with and rec- 
ognition of those elements which are bodily. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH WILL BE THE REIGN- 
ING CHURCH. 

The marriage of the church to Christ will 
be accompanied with royal gift and prerogative 
befitting her station and character. As the phys- 
ical creation proclaims the unity of its plan, and 
as types of the highest forms of animal life are 
traceable far back amid the early forms of living 
creatures ; so has God's ideal, which is to break 
upon the sight of the astonished universe in the 
exalted humanity of the church, been slowly un- 
folding itself through the ages. There has been 
a tendency in certain circles to leave that which 
is past and to find all the types of the future 
glory in the present order and form of churchly 
life ; yet that which occupied the attention of 
God and manifested his power for many genera- 
tions, must have a value which outlasts the years 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 49 

of its manifestations. The Jewish nationality 
— the theocracy — the exaltation and religious 
superiority of the Jewish over the surrounding 
nations, the royal dignity which clothed the true 
Jewish idea, embodied types of the nobler creation 
which was to come. The quiet peace of Eden, 
the rugged strength of the Mosaic economy, the 
royal power of the throne of David, each brings 
its contribution to join the higher types of spirit- 
uality found in the Gospel dispensation, and all 
unite in the typical announcement of the church of 
the future. 

THE IDEAL REACHED THROUGH PROGRESSIVE 

STEPS. 

Humanity of the earlier periods was not ready 
to enter into, or at least was not ready to consti- 
tute the royal body. It must receive its first 
lessons in those earlier and darker ages ; and, not 
forgetting these, it must pass on through the re- 
fining processes of the Gospel dispensation, until 
from the testimony of blood and from the baptism 
of the Spirit, and from the tribulative and char- 
acter-giving experiences of these times, humanity, 
4 



50 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

enlarged, instructed, sanctified, and brought to- 
gether into glorious unity, at last ascends the 
throne and is seated by the side of the King Him- 
self ; and 'alike by those gifts which were received 
in the lowly walks of earth, and by those which 
come in the hour of its coronation, is it fitted to 
take and hold with the King of Kings the sceptre 
of the world. 

JUDGMENTS UPON THE NATIONS AFTER THE 
TRANSLATION OF THE SAINTS. 

Following the marriage of Christ and his 
church will come those disciplinary and retribu- 
tive judgments with which He will visit the un- 
godly nations remaining upon the earth after the 
translation of the saints. Vials of wrath, long 
delayed, will be poured out in rapid succession. 
Calamities which have fallen upon portions of the 
world at different times will fall upon all nations. 
Men who have explained the evils of other times 
by theories which have excluded God, will be 
overwhelmed in mind and convinced of their 
folly. The instruments of wrath will be many 
and their use will be discriminating. The nature 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 51 

of sin itself and the degrees of guilt in human ac- 
tions will have fresh illumination by means of the 
fiery sentences which will issue forth from the Al- 
mighty. 

REPENTANCE OF THE REMNANT OF THE 
NATIONS. 

Multitudes will be slain, yet the destruction 
will not sweep away the inhabitants of earth as 
did the waters of the deluge ; many will seek for 
death, and it shall flee from them ; and before the 
days of this tribulation end the hearts of many 
will melt. 

EARTH'S MILLENNIAL BLESSING. 

Satan will be bound, and a tidal wave of re- 
pentance shall sweep over the desolated earth, the 
tears of which shall seem to go far toward wash- 
ing away the traces of its great dishonor, and the 
thousand years of tranquillity and prosperity shall 
begin — years wherein the beatific visions of the 
prophets shall have fulfillment, and the wilderness 
bud and blossom as the rose. In this reign of 
righteousness preceded by judgments the Bride 



52 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

of Christ will have part The tables will be 
turned — the saints who have been judged will 
judge. She who has stood before kings and 
rulers of this world, to answer in tears and groans 
for crimes she never committed, shall be exalted 
above the heads of all her enemies, and the days 
of her mourning shall be ended. 




CHAPTER V. 

THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH WILL BE THE 
HEAVENLY CHURCH. 

The millennial church will be the heavenly- 
church, first, in distinction from all ideas of millen- 
nial glory in this age, and from that glory which 
the remnants of the nations^ left from the great 
tribulation, shall enjoy when the trial is past. 
This has been already considered. 

And secondly, in distinction from the restricted 
and sometimes gross conceptions which so locate 
its seat and describe its functions as to take from 
it its heavenlv character. 

THE CONNECTION OF THE GLORIFIED CHURCH 
WITH THE EARTH. 

The glorified church will be in new and inti- 
mate connection with the earth, both during the 



54 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

millennium and after the last great transforma- 
tion shall have fitted the earth for its eternal state. 
There are passages like Rev. v. 10, wherein 
the redeemed out of every kindred and nation 
introduce into the new song which they sing, 
this, — " That they have been made kings and 
priests unto God, and that they shall reign on the 
earth ; " and these words are understood by some to 
locate upon the earth the future and eternal abode 
of the church. But there is another passage which 
needs to be read in connection with these, — Rev. 
xxi. 3, — " Behold the tabernacle of God is with 
men, and He shall dwell with them." In this is 
furnished a key to unlock the meaning of those 
words which connect the heavenly church with 
the earth. The scenes of Eden before the fall 
will be repeated, only the glory of that first para- 
dise will be excelled by that of the second. God 
shall again walk with men on the earth in rela- 
tions which these earliest scenes illustrate. Christ 
will reign over the saved nations which shall then, 
and forever, people this planet. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 55 

THE CHURCH DISTINCT FROM THE SAVED 
NATIONS. 

His church not to be confounded with these 
saved nations, but his church as his Bride shall 
reign with Him. As Christ will be present upon 
the earth, so in their degree will his church be 
present, not indeed as inhabitants of earth having 
citizenship only here, but in a sense cosmopolitan, 
and in her priestly and governmental capacity. 
As the limits of this earth will put no restriction 
upon Christ, so they will not restrain the walks 
of his church. As heaven and the heaven of 
heavens with all its dependencies constitute the 
dominion of Christ, so will these be open to his 
royal Bride. 

The church, from the beginning of the millen- 
nial state, will possess all the essential features of 
the eternal state, of which, so far as it is con- 
cerned, it will be the beginning. 

AFTER THE THOUSAND YEARS. 

At the close of the thousand years it will, 
without change in itself, pass into the eternal, 



56 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

changing toward the earth and toward the saved 
nations which dwell upon it only as the new and 
perfected earth shall by its final purification open 
the way for an enlarged connection and a closer 
and abiding intimacy. 

In that day heaven and earth will be no longer 
sundered, as they now appear. The ladder 
which Jacob saw set up on the earth, with its top 
reaching to heaven, will have more glorious reali- 
zation in the communion of the heavenly church, 
with the nations of the new earth. John saw the 
New Jerusalem, the figurative representation of 
the heavenly church, coming down from God out 
of heaven. The nations were dwelling on the 
earth, but the church, as showing its superior and 
heavenly character, descends out of heaven. It 
belongs therefore both to heaven and to earth. 
The New Jerusalem, as representing the highest 
form of the manifestation of the glorified church 
to the nations on the earth, and as centering 
within itself the brightest display of the presence 
of the King Himself, will be the eternal realiza- 
tion of that which the temple upon Mount Mo- 
riah, with its priestly service and its Shekinah, 
symbolized. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OBJECTIONS. 



It is proper that certain objections which 
are urged against some of the views here pre- 
sented, should be briefly considered. 

INTERPRETATION. 

The interpretation which unfolds these views 
is generally spoken of as the literal. It certainly 
is more deserving of this name than are some 
other methods which are in use, and if it be simply 
understood as an appropriate name by which to 
distinguish it, as, for example, from what is termed 
the spiritualizing method, there would be no oc- 
casion of complaint ; but it is unhappily the case 
that many confound the name thus given for pur- 
poses of convenience with an exact definition of 
the method itself. No one whose views would 
find acceptance with thoughtful minds thinks of 



58 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

interpreting the Word of God literally in the 
most absolute sense of that term, and the same 
may be said of any other book, and of all lan- 
guage, spoken or written. The whole question 
is one of degrees, or more correctly of special 
applications. It is, no doubt, the candid opinion 
of some men that, unless certain principles of in- 
terpretation are accepted, all ideas of settled ground 
for faith must be given up. But the Word of 
God does not rest on so fine a point as some men 
locate. Its bearings are not so limited. It is able 
to stand after a multitude of supports which have 
been found for it have served their day. It is 
safe to say that interpretation in the hands of 
men has not yet reached the place where it can 
be reckoned as an exact science. The Bible is 
restive under these formulas which men make for 
it. Some of them are no doubt very ingenious, 
so much so, that it may seem a wonder that the 
Word of God does not readily fall in with them, 
yet just this it has most resolutely refused to 
do. 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 59 



THE BIBLE ITS OWN INTERPRETER. 

It is quite probable that no system or set of 
rules will ever be found which will wholly meet 
the supposed necessity, for the Bible itself seems 
not to acknowledge the necessity of an unvarying 
rule. It is its own rule. It takes the whole of 
the Bible to interpret its several parts. It is 
claimed by the believers in the pre-millennial ad- 
vent of Christ that the facts in respect to proph- 
ecy which has been already fulfilled, and especially 
that portion which relates the first coming of 
Christ, most decidedly favor the literal rather 
than the spiritualizing method with those Script- 
ures which relate to his second coming. 

SUPPOSED INADEQUACY OF RESULTS. 

Again, it is said that if wickedness continues to 
increase in the world, as this age draws to its close, 
then the present dispensation ends without ade- 
quate results. But who is to determine what are 
adequate results ? It is said that the preparations 
which have been made, the means of grace which 
have been brought into use, are upon too grand a 



60 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

scale and of too costly a nature to have so short 
a trial, and to be laid aside when so little has 
been accomplished. The answer is that these 
means of grace are neither to be dishonored or 
laid aside. All the riches of grace and the power 
of the cross will pass on into the age that succeeds 
this. These preparations, which all admit have 
been made upon a grand scale, were never intend- 
ed to expend their full force and accomplish their 
greatest results in this age. 

TRUTH AND LOVE versus FORCE. 

Again, it is affirmed that the doctrine presented 
is a confession that truth and love are weak, not 
able to overcome the evil that is in the world, and 
hence must give place to force ; that it represents 
God as under the necessity of doing by sheer 
Almightiness what He could not do by grace. 
The men who make this objection, if they rely 
much upon it, ought for the sake of consistency to 
go further. The Gospel dispensation has now 
covered more than eighteen centuries, during 
which time the truth and love of God have been 
offered to unnumbered multitudes by a noble com- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 61 

pany of self-sacrificing men. Have all these ac- 
cepted grace ? Will it be found in the last day 
that the sweet forces of truth and love have con- 
quered all who have been in array against God ? 
If this is not the case, if, as these men themselves 
believe, there will be at the judgment a company 
of men upon whom the Gospel has had no effect 
except to harden them, and who stand at the bar 
of God only because of a call which they could 
not disobey, shall it be said that because these 
men are unsaved the Gospel has been by so much 
a failure ? No more can it be said that truth and 
love have failed, when the means and methods by 
which God has offered grace to men during this 
age, and which shall have accomplished that to 
which they were appointed, shall in due time give 
place to another dispensation. 

HARMONY OF THE DIVINE FORCES. 

Would it not be well to inquire whether the 
relation of what is spoken of as the sheer force or 
Almightiness of God to his truth and love, is 
fully understood by those who thus judge ? There 
are views of God's love held in this world which 



62 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

evangelical Christians disavow as neither doing 
honor to the character of God nor yet to the 
minds which hold them. 

Revelation nowhere represents God as enter- 
ing into and carrying on the work of redemption 
with truth and love as the only powers employed. 
He would abdicate his throne were He to do this. 
All the forces and movements of God's Al mighti- 
ness do but illuminate his truth and illustrate his 
love. His perfectness is such that He never 
carries on any movement by the exercise of a 
part of his nature at the expense of some other 
part. God never will do anything in redemption 
by the sheer force of which these persons speak. 
He never has done anything by a love which de- 
nies a place to force. The past is full of exam- 
ples showing how God uses both judgment and 
mercy. When God offers to men the Gospel, and 
patiently waits through centuries of abuse till an 
appointed time, and then by a sudden change and 
by rapidly succeeding judgments in which many 
souls are hurled into perdition, brings the remnant 
of the world to its senses and introduces a more 
glorious state, who shall say that there has been 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 63 

any reproachful failure, or that any qualities in 
the Divine nature have suffered an eclipse ? 

THE CHARGE OF MATERIALISM. 

It is said that these views tend toward a gross 
materialism. That some minds tend toward such 
gross conceptions is evident, but these doctrines 
ought not to be held responsible for such facts 
any more than the doctrine of spiritual things 
common to all evangelical Christians should be 
held responsible for the transcendentalism into 
which some individuals pass. 

THE SUPPOSED TENDENCY TO LESSEN MISSION- 
ARY ZEAL. 

Another and perhaps the gravest charge which 
is made against millenarian views is, that they are 
destructive of missionary zeal. What of ardor 
there may be sustained by a reliance upon human 
enterprise and activity, forgetful largely of the 
Divine power, would very likely suffer abatement 
from the reception of these views. That kind of 
enthusiasm which depends upon the excitements 
of present success, upon vivid pictures of wonder- 



64 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

fill scenes, which lives where there is abundance 
of sight, but dies under the trials of the walk by 
faith, — that enthusiasm would be lessened. 

THE TRUE ZEAL. 

But the call of the Gospel sends men to do a 
work for God without regard to the measure of 
present results, and that zeal which is better for 
the service of Christ and the good of the world 
finds its nourishment in God Himself. If it could 
be shown by revelation and the progress of events 
that the world was being rapidly converted, and 
that the power of wickedness would soon give 
way, the fact would be an encouragement to 
activity, but when revelation has to have this no- 
tion interpreted into it, and when men have to 
be constantly accounting for the unhappy facts 
which surround them, then, even upon natural 
grounds, it may be confidently affirmed that the 
view of things which leads the servants of God 
to expect the opposition of a world resisting to the 
bitter end, are the views calculated to sustain the 
deeper and truer missionary zeal. A true fidelity 
asks only to know what is the nature of the ex- 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 65 

pected service. Courageous sons of the cross ask 
only to have set before them the field as it is ; if 
there are difficulties, they prefer to know them ; if 
the conflict lasts till the end, they can the more 
steadily hold their place and do their work in the 
face of trials foreseen, than can those who go forth 
with glowing anticipations of a success which is 
to be a matter of sight, but which is constantly 
clouded by disappointment and a hope deferred 
which maketh the heart sick. 

REASON OF THE DELAY. 

Finally, if it be asked why the protracted war- 
fare of the church, and the labors and pains of 
evangelistic service, if, after all, God is to inter- 
pose with the force of his red right arm ? why 
not the force sooner, and these tribulations cut 
short ? — the reply is, because God's plan spans 
wider spaces than many conceive, and covers a 
wider field than that embraced in the salvation of 
any number of men from pains and penalties, 
either in this age or those which are to come. 
The history of God's unfolding purposes in con- 
nection with the long, dark period through which 
5 



66 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

the race has existed, cannot spare a single 
chapter. 

As God has been sending forth the church to 
preach the Gospel for a testimony to the nations, 
so He, by this and by other and unseen operations, 
has been preparing a testimony which shall be 
full and powerful, and shall last forever. The 
darkness as well as the light, the blasphemy as 
well as the praise, the refusal of grace by some 
and its acceptance by others, shall all have place 
in that consummation in which the slow move- 
ment of the ages ends at length. 

A GREAT LESSON. 

There were great lessons to be taught by God 
and learned by men, — lessons upon those seem- 
ingly well known but really imperfectly understood 
subjects of God and government — justice and 
love, sin and holiness. Before God is done with 
this world He will have unfolded and impressed 
these truths so that the lesson will not need to be 
retaught. Nay, more, though it may be a spec- 
ulation, yet one whose course agrees with the 
pointing of certain words in revelation : When 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 67 

God shall have finished the teaching of earth and 
time, it may be that not only the multiplying 
generations of the new earth but also the un- 
numbered races of other worlds, created and to 
be created, which people or may hereafter people 
those heavenly bodies which surround us in space, 
shall have before them the same lesson, written 
alike in the dark-lettered records of sin and death, 
in the blood-red symbols of the cross, and in the 
grandly illuminated history of the church, traced 
along all those ways which have led through the 
wilderness to her place of transcendent dignity as 
the chaste and glorified Bride of Christ. In this 
God shall make such an exhibit of his own nature 
and of the nature of sin as shall for evermore be 
the prevention of rebellion and the security of 
liberty to all the nations through their intelligent 
choice of obedience and holiness. One history of 
wickedness and one hell will be enough for all 
worlds while eternal ages roll. Not a cloud, 
therefore, not an hour of darkness, not a pang of 
remorse, not a wail of sorrow of all that has been 
on earth, or of all that shall be in hell, could be 
spared from the great total of this testimony of 



G8 THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 

the ages. And with a clear understanding of 
that relation which she sustains to her Lord, and 
that work in which she is permitted to bear so 
honorable a part, and of that glory which gathers 
its brightness from all the events of earth and 
from out of the wreck of time, the church may for 
a little while be well content with her present 
lot, and in the patience of hope may gladly con- 
sent to all the tribulations of earth through which 
she is making her pilgrimage to reach the king- 
dom and the throne. 

The human and earthly hope of a triumph in 
which — guard it ever so well — there is constant 
danger of too much confidence in the flesh and of 
too little praise to God, may well be thrown aside 
in favor of the right royal vision which through 
the Word of God breaks upon the spiritual sight, 
from out those heavens where even now the rapt 
soul may almost see the hastening movements 
which herald the near approach of the returning 
Lord, and the coming of that day in which the 
mystery of God shall be finished, and the church 
of the first-born, delivered from the last tribula- 
tion, exalted to the queenly place, head of all 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 69 

races and nations, shall manifest unto principal- 
ities and powers in heavenly places, the unsearch- 
able riches and manifold wisdom of God according 
tx> the eternal purpose which He purposed in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Reader, what is your hope ? Are you assured 
of a glorious part in the inheritance of the saints 
in light ? 

The gift of God is eternal life through our 
Lord Jesus Christ. Grace for these days of time 
and glory for the ages to come are received not 
by works but by faith. Turn from this evil world. 
Believe and be ready. The grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. 




THE 



MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 



BY 



Rev. J. J. MILLER. 




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